my ear is clogged

I met a cute guy.

He took me to go watch some roller derby, which was really fun.

Seriously, I had such a good time that I got a Windy City Rollers shirt. I don't buy shirts from just anybody.

Then, a little while later, I went to the World Jiujitsu Championship. I had some adventures. First of all, I met this guy:

See his shirt? He is the guy whose name is on the shirt. He thought I was pretty cool, for some reason, and came over to cheer/coach for me during my matches. I thought that was really nice of him.

But before I had my matches, I had to get checked out by the ring coordinators. I was on weight - this year I wasn't really trying very hard in that respect - but apparently my gi was too frayed to compete in. It was very sad, because it's been my favorite gi for the whole two years I've been doing jiujitsu. I had some guys from my team there with me, so I asked them what to do. They went off to talk about it for a minute, and then one of them came back: "Hold on, Jack is going to go steal you one." So I borrowed a gi from some anonymous, probably lightweight guy from the Megaton team. That's the one I'm wearing up above. Thanks, guy!

I won my first match by advantage - it went pretty much the same as my last match at Pan Ams last year. Before my second match, Jack warned me that the girl likes to do a particular guard pass, and that I should watch out for it. I watched for it. She did it. It worked anyway. Oh well.

Still, by winning the first match, I had made it into the semis, so I got a medal:

I spent the next few days tooling around in California with my parents and grandparents, but I had caught a cold somehow (maybe on the plane). So I was kind of miserable and I ate a lot of soup. The soup was fantastic, though.

Here's what you do: put some kind of green vegetable in enough water (or broth) to just barely cover it, and cook it until it is mushy. Broccoli, asparagus, and zucchini all work well for this. Spinach might work too, I haven't tried it. You mash the vegetable, or if it is stringy like asparagus you put it in the blender. Then you make a roux with a couple of tablespoons of butter and add some milk to it until it is soupy. You can add cheese to this part if you want. Also salt and pepper. Then you mix this soupy part back in with the mashed vegetables, and you eat it.

Strawberries were also fantastic in California. They didn't taste like strawberries, though. They tasted like strawberry concentrate, and they didn't even need sugar if you were making dessert out of them. I want to go back just to eat strawberries.